Whicker: Ducks need to realize they have to play outside the box against Sharks

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Ducks center Ryan Kesler, right, looks to shoot as Sharks goaltender Martin Jones shows his back during the first period of Game 1 of their first-round playoff series on Thursday night at Honda Center. The Ducks didn’t give Jones nearly enough to worry about in a 3-0 loss. (Photo by Kyusung Gong/Contributing Photographer)

ANAHEIM — Hampus Lindholm said he’s never seen anyone win a Stanley Cup from the penalty box. Granted, he’s only 24, but he’s done his research.

The Ducks committed two interferences, a holding, a roughing and three slashings in Game 1 Thursday night. “And they deserved every one of them,” said Peter DeBoer, San Jose’s coach.

The Ducks were not cited for skating, playmaking or perservering, and thus lost 3-0 to chuck away the home-ice advantage they had earned in the final weeks of the regular season. The Sharks are 3-0 at Honda Center this season anyway. This was more of a case of history than geography. The Ducks spend far too much time in the missing man formation.

San Jose only scored one power-play goal, and that was 10 seconds into a two-man advantage, after Andrew Cogliano and Ryan Getzlaf had slashed their way to the sidelines early in the second period.

But the Sharks gained inspiration from that power play and most of the others, because they so seldom let the Ducks escape.

“That can be pretty taxing,” Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. “They’d spend a minute and a half or two minutes in our zone. But this is new rules hockey. You can’t expect to win when you take seven penalties.”

Meanwhile, San Jose was flagged only twice in the first two periods. One was goaltender interference on Timo Meier, who was at least assisted in that endeavor by the Ducks’ Brandon Montour. The other was a slash by Brendan Dillon.

The Sharks might consider taking more penalties just to make the Ducks revisit the frustration of their own dim power play. Anaheim managed only three power-play shots on Martin Jones, who somehow stayed awake to make 25 saves for the shutout.

Put it all together and it wasn’t an advertisement for that All-Out Playoff Intensity that the NHL delivers, more often than not. The Ducks haven’t been this listless in a long time. Maybe the sprint to the 82nd game was more demanding than they thought.

“We need to get the puck deep, play with more speed,” Lindholm said. “We had a lot of long shifts. We need to get into the offensive zone a lot more, try to put some pressure on them. They were coming at us hard all night and we didn’t respond to it.”

The Ducks only had four shots on Jones in a spirited first period, and they did quash two San Jose power plays. The second period came right off the top of DeBoer’s wish list, with the Sharks basically herding the Ducks back toward their goal.

Brent Burns started one sequence by meeting Nick Ritchie at his own blue line and stripping the puck. It wasn’t long before Evander Kane, who had scored on the 5-on-3, darted toward the goal and scored on Joe Pavelski’s assist. Then Burns flicked what Ducks defenseman Francois Beauchemin called a “seeing-eye shot” through a crowd and past John Gibson, 84 seconds later.

“They probably got some momentum out of their power play,” Beauchemin said. “After we gave up the second goal, it should have been our turn. We should have answered back and generated some momentum. Instead, it was the opposite.

“They’re fast, they’re tracking back, they’re keeping us from getting down the ice, and when you make turnovers it’s hard to overcome that. When the turnovers happen, they come right at you with three, four guys on the rush.”

Add a 53 percent faceoff edge for the Sharks and zero shots for Adam Henrique and Jakob Silfverberg, and that narrows the highlights to Dawn Wright’s usual bravura Star-Spangled Banner.

The Sharks were shorthanded 224 times this season, fewest in the Western Conference, and gave up 34 power-play goals in 82 games, fewest in the league. The Ducks were shorthanded 274 times, fourth most in the league. That isn’t always a negative stat. Nashville, the Presidents’ Trophy winner, was shorthanded more than anyone.

But the Ducks were 30th, or next-to-last, in power-play opportunities.

“Our guys pay a lot of attention to detail,” DeBoer said. “They try to avoid the stuff after the whistle, and the penalties that aren’t necessary.

Meanwhile, Carlyle was lamenting that the Ducks seemed to play without “our legs, our hands and our minds.” At least their eyes seemed fine. They saw the same bad game you did.